1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to pop-ups and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for providing configurable pop-ups.
2. Description of the Related Art
Pop-ups such as tooltips are text areas that are automatically displayed when a user moves the cursor over a predetermined area of a computer display. Pop-ups are used to provide information to a user when the cursor is moved over specific portions of a computer screen. For example, in a Microsoft Windows operating system environment, when the cursor is placed momentarily over a displayed icon such as an icon indicating a folder, information will pop up indicating a size of the information in the folder as well as a partial list of the names of the files in the folder. Another example of a tooltip can be seen by placing the cursor on an icon indicating a word processing document. A pop-up will display the title of the document, the type of document (WORD, Word Perfect, HTML, etc), the author of the document, a “date modified” indicating the date the document was last modified and a size of the document.
Although the present disclosure will be described primarily with respect to tooltips used in a Microsoft Windows type operating system, it will be appreciated that aspects of the present disclosure may be applied to any type of pop-up used in any type of operating system.
A user may have limited control over tooltips. For example, in a Windows operating system environment as shown in FIG. 1, one of the folder options (400) allows a user to set whether to show a pop-up (tooltip) description for folder and desktop items.
Although pop-ups can provide valuable information to the user, much of the information may be unnecessary or undesired. On the other hand, the pop-ups may not provide enough information and/or information that would be helpful to the user.
Accordingly, it would be beneficial if the user was able to indicate the specific type of information to be displayed by the pop-ups.